


Cosmos Incognitus

by Ossobuco



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Grey Wardens, IN SPACE!, Sci-Fi AU, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 08:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ossobuco/pseuds/Ossobuco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the invention of faster-than-light travel, humanity made contact with sentient species and alien worlds beyond the Solar system, entering a new era of interstellar relations--an era as enriched by discovery and cooperation as it is marred by war and conquest. But as the Terran empire, THEDAS, sends its scientists further into deep space, they disturb forces that now threaten the safety of the entire galaxy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dark Matter

Codex: Dark Matter

_For six years, our experiments went off without a hitch. There are so many potential applications—renewable energy, faster technology, not to mention a deeper understanding of the universe itself—to Dark Matter that the investments started pouring in once the early stages showed traces of it. We became able to predict it, to locate it. We developed instruments, ever more finely-tuned, to seek it out. We studied it from a distance, taking measurements. It reacted just as all of our equations said it would._

_We were arrogant. We thought we knew it. We thought it was_ safe _. We thought that we only dreamed the way it called to us, those haunting songs that woke us in the early mornings like the breaths of the reactor core or a mother's voice in the ears of her child. You can't imagine it, how sweet it was. How impossible it was to resist._

_Larsson built a containment unit. We pushed out into deep space, following the energy signatures, until we were able to find a tangle of it, a huge one, bigger than we'd ever detected before. Light-days across. It was beautiful—not a kind of beauty that you can see, but the kind that you can feel straight through to your bones—and the song, the song, there isn't a word in any language ever spoken that can describe the song._

_“If God exists,” Larsson said to me as we made the collection, “we've found Him.”_

_Maybe God didn't like that very much._

_None of our equations could predict the way the tangle moved—like it was alive, like it was reaching for us, to trap us and pull us in. We left the samples, we jettisoned everything we could, and the engines still barely got us out in time. As we fled, our instruments showed the tangle vanishing in on itself, coiling up, disappearing from space itself. Gone. We were cold. Alone._

_Larsson showed the symptoms first. Radiation burns, fast, deep. He became delirious—with pain, or from something else? Even pumped full of every medication we could get our hands on, he talked of nothing but the song. When he couldn't talk, he screamed. He died before we reached the first outpost._

_Everyone else is dead. One by one, they started showing the burns—one by one, they went mad, and when we ran out of drugs, when we couldn't restrain them, they turned on us. Their madness, whatever it was, gave them strength. Fortunately for me, the burns killed them in a matter of days. Just like Larsson._

_They said we'd knocked on the door of Heaven. I don't believe that, but right now, you could convince me that we broke into Hell._

_I'm on Gliese 581d. Hospitalized. I have the burns. I can hear it again—the song. I have a few hours, I know, before my body starts to resist the drugs. We should have left this alone. Now, because of us, it's out there, I can feel it out there. It's changed, it's awake. Conscious. The Dark Matter can't be contained—no, not can't,_ won't _. You can try. You'll fail._

_– excerpt from a letter by J. H. Coripheos, physicist, THEDAS_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THEDAS stands for Terran Homeworld Empire Designation Autonomous/Space-faring. It encompasses the Solar system and most human-controlled territory in the Solar Interstellar Neighborhood, which after the Arlathan Conflict includes the Elvhenan system (former homeworld 61 Virginis e, former designation A/S). The Dwarven system has resisted human efforts to colonize, but sustains a commercial relationship.


	2. The Arlathan Conflict

Codex: the Arlathan Conflict  
  
 _We did not go to war willingly, for that is not the way of the People. It was the greed and hubris of the shemlen that drove us to this. Even knowing the effects they had on our bodies and the devastation they had wrought on our lesser worlds, they would not leave us until we gave them access to our sacred homeworld, Arlathan, so they could steal its many riches for themselves. Only when they refused to leave Elvhenan—only when they armed their colonies and threatened to take Arlathan by force—did we turn to violence._  
  
 _First, we drove their colonies from our lesser worlds. We assembled our warships and let them witness the sorrows we had crafted—disease and poison, designed to target their bodies and leave our worlds unharmed. There, our mastery of land and life gave us an advantage. Our weapons were effective, and the shemlen fled, knowing they would be defeated. We celebrated, innocently believing that a war with shemlen could be won quickly and without pain._  
  
 _Months later, they returned--not with vessels of peace and commerce, but with fleet upon fleet of armored ships. We met them face to face and unleashed the full force of our weapons, but their numbers were great and their tactics vicious. Many elvhen were sent to Falon'Din's side during those long battles. Through their sacrifices, we nearly routed the shemlen assault, but in the end, it was not enough. The shemlen struck Arlathan itself with the most terrible of their weapons, and even our craft could not save it. Our world was dead, and too many of our people with it._  
  
 _We could not return to Arlathan to perform rites for our dead. It was all we could do to care for the living. We gathered into our ships and asked our halla to bear us far away, mourning the loss of Elvhenan as we mourned our lost brothers and sisters. We divided into family groups, traveling apart so that the shemlen might not track us. So it has been ever since, and so it shall be until their empire burns itself out, and we may claim a new world as our home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Elvhen homeworld was the fifth planet of the star 61 Virginis, a G-class star much like Sol, and along with several nearby habitable planets and terraformed moons, made up what was known as the Elvhenan system. The Elvhen possessed advanced knowledge of genetic engineering and manipulation, incorporating living cellular material and DNA into much of their technology. They were able to interface with four-dimensional space, and revered a number of beings from the Fourth as gods.


End file.
